linux.git/kernel/fork.c, branch v6.12.80

unshare: fix unshare_fs() handling

2026-03-25T10:08:24+00:00

[ Upstream commit 6c4b2243cb6c0755159bd567130d5e12e7b10d9f ]

There's an unpleasant corner case in unshare(2), when we have a
CLONE_NEWNS in flags and current->fs hadn't been shared at all; in that
case copy_mnt_ns() gets passed current->fs instead of a private copy,
which causes interesting warts in proof of correctness]

> I guess if private means fs->users == 1, the condition could still be true.

Unfortunately, it's worse than just a convoluted proof of correctness.
Consider the case when we have CLONE_NEWCGROUP in addition to CLONE_NEWNS
(and current->fs->users == 1).

We pass current->fs to copy_mnt_ns(), all right.  Suppose it succeeds and
flips current->fs->{pwd,root} to corresponding locations in the new namespace.
Now we proceed to copy_cgroup_ns(), which fails (e.g. with -ENOMEM).
We call put_mnt_ns() on the namespace created by copy_mnt_ns(), it's
destroyed and its mount tree is dissolved, but...  current->fs->root and
current->fs->pwd are both left pointing to now detached mounts.

They are pinning those, so it's not a UAF, but it leaves the calling
process with unshare(2) failing with -ENOMEM _and_ leaving it with
pwd and root on detached isolated mounts.  The last part is clearly a bug.

There is other fun related to that mess (races with pivot_root(), including
the one between pivot_root() and fork(), of all things), but this one
is easy to isolate and fix - treat CLONE_NEWNS as "allocate a new
fs_struct even if it hadn't been shared in the first place".  Sure, we could
go for something like "if both CLONE_NEWNS *and* one of the things that might
end up failing after copy_mnt_ns() call in create_new_namespaces() are set,
force allocation of new fs_struct", but let's keep it simple - the cost
of copy_fs_struct() is trivial.

Another benefit is that copy_mnt_ns() with CLONE_NEWNS *always* gets
a freshly allocated fs_struct, yet to be attached to anything.  That
seriously simplifies the analysis...

FWIW, that bug had been there since the introduction of unshare(2) ;-/

Signed-off-by: Al Viro 
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260207082524.GE3183987@ZenIV
Tested-by: Waiman Long 
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner 
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

copy_sighand: Handle architectures where sizeof(unsigned long) < sizeof(u64)

2025-10-19T14:33:48+00:00

commit 04ff48239f46e8b493571e260bd0e6c3a6400371 upstream.

With the introduction of clone3 in commit 7f192e3cd316 ("fork: add
clone3") the effective bit width of clone_flags on all architectures was
increased from 32-bit to 64-bit. However, the signature of the copy_*
helper functions (e.g., copy_sighand) used by copy_process was not
adapted.

As such, they truncate the flags on any 32-bit architectures that
supports clone3 (arc, arm, csky, m68k, microblaze, mips32, openrisc,
parisc32, powerpc32, riscv32, x86-32 and xtensa).

For copy_sighand with CLONE_CLEAR_SIGHAND being an actual u64
constant, this triggers an observable bug in kernel selftest
clone3_clear_sighand:

        if (clone_flags & CLONE_CLEAR_SIGHAND)

in function copy_sighand within fork.c will always fail given:

        unsigned long /* == uint32_t */ clone_flags
        #define CLONE_CLEAR_SIGHAND 0x100000000ULL

This commit fixes the bug by always passing clone_flags to copy_sighand
via their declared u64 type, invariant of architecture-dependent integer
sizes.

Fixes: b612e5df4587 ("clone3: add CLONE_CLEAR_SIGHAND")
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org # linux-5.5+
Signed-off-by: Simon Schuster 
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20250901-nios2-implement-clone3-v2-1-53fcf5577d57@siemens-energy.com
Acked-by: David Hildenbrand 
Reviewed-by: Lorenzo Stoakes 
Reviewed-by: Arnd Bergmann 
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner 
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

kernel/fork: only call untrack_pfn_clear() on VMAs duplicated for fork()

2025-05-29T09:03:14+00:00

[ Upstream commit e9f180d7cfde23b9f8eebd60272465176373ab2c ]

Not intuitive, but vm_area_dup() located in kernel/fork.c is not only used
for duplicating VMAs during fork(), but also for duplicating VMAs when
splitting VMAs or when mremap()'ing them.

VM_PFNMAP mappings can at least get ordinarily mremap()'ed (no change in
size) and apparently also shrunk during mremap(), which implies
duplicating the VMA in __split_vma() first.

In case of ordinary mremap() (no change in size), we first duplicate the
VMA in copy_vma_and_data()->copy_vma() to then call untrack_pfn_clear() on
the old VMA: we effectively move the VM_PAT reservation.  So the
untrack_pfn_clear() call on the new VMA duplicating is wrong in that
context.

Splitting of VMAs seems problematic, because we don't duplicate/adjust the
reservation when splitting the VMA.  Instead, in memtype_erase() -- called
during zapping/munmap -- we shrink a reservation in case only the end
address matches: Assume we split a VMA into A and B, both would share a
reservation until B is unmapped.

So when unmapping B, the reservation would be updated to cover only A.
When unmapping A, we would properly remove the now-shrunk reservation.
That scenario describes the mremap() shrinking (old_size > new_size),
where we split + unmap B, and the untrack_pfn_clear() on the new VMA when
is wrong.

What if we manage to split a VM_PFNMAP VMA into A and B and unmap A first?
It would be broken because we would never free the reservation.  Likely,
there are ways to trigger such a VMA split outside of mremap().

Affecting other VMA duplication was not intended, vm_area_dup() being used
outside of kernel/fork.c was an oversight.  So let's fix that for; how to
handle VMA splits better should be investigated separately.

With a simple reproducer that uses mprotect() to split such a VMA I can
trigger

x86/PAT: pat_mremap:26448 freeing invalid memtype [mem 0x00000000-0x00000fff]

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250422144942.2871395-1-david@redhat.com
Fixes: dc84bc2aba85 ("x86/mm/pat: Fix VM_PAT handling when fork() fails in copy_page_range()")
Signed-off-by: David Hildenbrand 
Reviewed-by: Lorenzo Stoakes 
Cc: Ingo Molnar 
Cc: Dave Hansen 
Cc: Andy Lutomirski 
Cc: Peter Zijlstra 
Cc: Thomas Gleixner 
Cc: Borislav Petkov 
Cc: Rik van Riel 
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" 
Cc: Linus Torvalds 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

x86/mm/pat: Fix VM_PAT handling when fork() fails in copy_page_range()

2025-04-10T12:39:18+00:00

[ Upstream commit dc84bc2aba85a1508f04a936f9f9a15f64ebfb31 ]

If track_pfn_copy() fails, we already added the dst VMA to the maple
tree. As fork() fails, we'll cleanup the maple tree, and stumble over
the dst VMA for which we neither performed any reservation nor copied
any page tables.

Consequently untrack_pfn() will see VM_PAT and try obtaining the
PAT information from the page table -- which fails because the page
table was not copied.

The easiest fix would be to simply clear the VM_PAT flag of the dst VMA
if track_pfn_copy() fails. However, the whole thing is about "simply"
clearing the VM_PAT flag is shaky as well: if we passed track_pfn_copy()
and performed a reservation, but copying the page tables fails, we'll
simply clear the VM_PAT flag, not properly undoing the reservation ...
which is also wrong.

So let's fix it properly: set the VM_PAT flag only if the reservation
succeeded (leaving it clear initially), and undo the reservation if
anything goes wrong while copying the page tables: clearing the VM_PAT
flag after undoing the reservation.

Note that any copied page table entries will get zapped when the VMA will
get removed later, after copy_page_range() succeeded; as VM_PAT is not set
then, we won't try cleaning VM_PAT up once more and untrack_pfn() will be
happy. Note that leaving these page tables in place without a reservation
is not a problem, as we are aborting fork(); this process will never run.

A reproducer can trigger this usually at the first try:

  https://gitlab.com/davidhildenbrand/scratchspace/-/raw/main/reproducers/pat_fork.c

  WARNING: CPU: 26 PID: 11650 at arch/x86/mm/pat/memtype.c:983 get_pat_info+0xf6/0x110
  Modules linked in: ...
  CPU: 26 UID: 0 PID: 11650 Comm: repro3 Not tainted 6.12.0-rc5+ #92
  Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS 1.16.3-2.fc40 04/01/2014
  RIP: 0010:get_pat_info+0xf6/0x110
  ...
  Call Trace:
   
   ...
   untrack_pfn+0x52/0x110
   unmap_single_vma+0xa6/0xe0
   unmap_vmas+0x105/0x1f0
   exit_mmap+0xf6/0x460
   __mmput+0x4b/0x120
   copy_process+0x1bf6/0x2aa0
   kernel_clone+0xab/0x440
   __do_sys_clone+0x66/0x90
   do_syscall_64+0x95/0x180

Likely this case was missed in:

  d155df53f310 ("x86/mm/pat: clear VM_PAT if copy_p4d_range failed")

... and instead of undoing the reservation we simply cleared the VM_PAT flag.

Keep the documentation of these functions in include/linux/pgtable.h,
one place is more than sufficient -- we should clean that up for the other
functions like track_pfn_remap/untrack_pfn separately.

Fixes: d155df53f310 ("x86/mm/pat: clear VM_PAT if copy_p4d_range failed")
Fixes: 2ab640379a0a ("x86: PAT: hooks in generic vm code to help archs to track pfnmap regions - v3")
Reported-by: xingwei lee 
Reported-by: yuxin wang 
Reported-by: Marius Fleischer 
Signed-off-by: David Hildenbrand 
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar 
Cc: Andy Lutomirski 
Cc: Peter Zijlstra 
Cc: Rik van Riel 
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" 
Cc: Linus Torvalds 
Cc: Andrew Morton 
Cc: linux-mm@kvack.org
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250321112323.153741-1-david@redhat.com
Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CABOYnLx_dnqzpCW99G81DmOr+2UzdmZMk=T3uxwNxwz+R1RAwg@mail.gmail.com/
Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAJg=8jwijTP5fre8woS4JVJQ8iUA6v+iNcsOgtj9Zfpc3obDOQ@mail.gmail.com/
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

fork: avoid inappropriate uprobe access to invalid mm

2025-01-02T09:34:10+00:00

[ Upstream commit 8ac662f5da19f5873fdd94c48a5cdb45b2e1b58f ]

If dup_mmap() encounters an issue, currently uprobe is able to access the
relevant mm via the reverse mapping (in build_map_info()), and if we are
very unlucky with a race window, observe invalid XA_ZERO_ENTRY state which
we establish as part of the fork error path.

This occurs because uprobe_write_opcode() invokes anon_vma_prepare() which
in turn invokes find_mergeable_anon_vma() that uses a VMA iterator,
invoking vma_iter_load() which uses the advanced maple tree API and thus
is able to observe XA_ZERO_ENTRY entries added to dup_mmap() in commit
d24062914837 ("fork: use __mt_dup() to duplicate maple tree in
dup_mmap()").

This change was made on the assumption that only process tear-down code
would actually observe (and make use of) these values.  However this very
unlikely but still possible edge case with uprobes exists and
unfortunately does make these observable.

The uprobe operation prevents races against the dup_mmap() operation via
the dup_mmap_sem semaphore, which is acquired via uprobe_start_dup_mmap()
and dropped via uprobe_end_dup_mmap(), and held across
register_for_each_vma() prior to invoking build_map_info() which does the
reverse mapping lookup.

Currently these are acquired and dropped within dup_mmap(), which exposes
the race window prior to error handling in the invoking dup_mm() which
tears down the mm.

We can avoid all this by just moving the invocation of
uprobe_start_dup_mmap() and uprobe_end_dup_mmap() up a level to dup_mm()
and only release this lock once the dup_mmap() operation succeeds or clean
up is done.

This means that the uprobe code can never observe an incompletely
constructed mm and resolves the issue in this case.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20241210172412.52995-1-lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com
Fixes: d24062914837 ("fork: use __mt_dup() to duplicate maple tree in dup_mmap()")
Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Stoakes 
Reported-by: syzbot+2d788f4f7cb660dac4b7@syzkaller.appspotmail.com
Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/all/6756d273.050a0220.2477f.003d.GAE@google.com/
Cc: Adrian Hunter 
Cc: Alexander Shishkin 
Cc: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo 
Cc: Ian Rogers 
Cc: Ingo Molnar 
Cc: Jann Horn 
Cc: Jiri Olsa 
Cc: Kan Liang 
Cc: Liam R. Howlett 
Cc: Mark Rutland 
Cc: Masami Hiramatsu 
Cc: Namhyung Kim 
Cc: Oleg Nesterov 
Cc: Peng Zhang 
Cc: Peter Zijlstra 
Cc: Vlastimil Babka 
Cc: David Hildenbrand 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

Revert "fs: don't block i_writecount during exec"

2024-12-05T13:02:50+00:00

commit 3b832035387ff508fdcf0fba66701afc78f79e3d upstream.

This reverts commit 2a010c41285345da60cece35575b4e0af7e7bf44.

Rui Ueyama  writes:

> I'm the creator and the maintainer of the mold linker
> (https://github.com/rui314/mold). Recently, we discovered that mold
> started causing process crashes in certain situations due to a change
> in the Linux kernel. Here are the details:
>
> - In general, overwriting an existing file is much faster than
> creating an empty file and writing to it on Linux, so mold attempts to
> reuse an existing executable file if it exists.
>
> - If a program is running, opening the executable file for writing
> previously failed with ETXTBSY. If that happens, mold falls back to
> creating a new file.
>
> - However, the Linux kernel recently changed the behavior so that
> writing to an executable file is now always permitted
> (https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=2a010c412853).
>
> That caused mold to write to an executable file even if there's a
> process running that file. Since changes to mmap'ed files are
> immediately visible to other processes, any processes running that
> file would almost certainly crash in a very mysterious way.
> Identifying the cause of these random crashes took us a few days.
>
> Rejecting writes to an executable file that is currently running is a
> well-known behavior, and Linux had operated that way for a very long
> time. So, I don’t believe relying on this behavior was our mistake;
> rather, I see this as a regression in the Linux kernel.

Quoting myself from commit 2a010c412853 ("fs: don't block i_writecount during exec")

> Yes, someone in userspace could potentially be relying on this. It's not
> completely out of the realm of possibility but let's find out if that's
> actually the case and not guess.

It seems we found out that someone is relying on this obscure behavior.
So revert the change.

Link: https://github.com/rui314/mold/issues/1361
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/4a2bc207-76be-4715-8e12-7fc45a76a125@leemhuis.info
Cc: 
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner 
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

Merge tag 'timers-urgent-2024-11-03' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip

2024-11-03T18:22:21+00:00

Pull timer fix from Thomas Gleixner:
 "A single fix for posix CPU timers.

  When a thread is cloned, the posix CPU timers are not inherited.

  If the parent has a CPU timer armed the corresponding tick dependency
  in the tasks tick_dep_mask is set and copied to the new thread, which
  means the new thread and all decendants will prevent the system to go
  into full NOHZ operation.

  Clear the tick dependency mask in copy_process() to fix this"

* tag 'timers-urgent-2024-11-03' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip:
  posix-cpu-timers: Clear TICK_DEP_BIT_POSIX_TIMER on clone

fork: only invoke khugepaged, ksm hooks if no error

2024-10-29T04:40:39+00:00

There is no reason to invoke these hooks early against an mm that is in an
incomplete state.

The change in commit d24062914837 ("fork: use __mt_dup() to duplicate
maple tree in dup_mmap()") makes this more pertinent as we may be in a
state where entries in the maple tree are not yet consistent.

Their placement early in dup_mmap() only appears to have been meaningful
for early error checking, and since functionally it'd require a very small
allocation to fail (in practice 'too small to fail') that'd only occur in
the most dire circumstances, meaning the fork would fail or be OOM'd in
any case.

Since both khugepaged and KSM tracking are there to provide optimisations
to memory performance rather than critical functionality, it doesn't
really matter all that much if, under such dire memory pressure, we fail
to register an mm with these.

As a result, we follow the example of commit d2081b2bf819 ("mm:
khugepaged: make khugepaged_enter() void function") and make ksm_fork() a
void function also.

We only expose the mm to these functions once we are done with them and
only if no error occurred in the fork operation.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/e0cb8b840c9d1d5a6e84d4f8eff5f3f2022aa10c.1729014377.git.lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com
Fixes: d24062914837 ("fork: use __mt_dup() to duplicate maple tree in dup_mmap()")
Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Stoakes 
Reported-by: Jann Horn 
Reviewed-by: Liam R. Howlett 
Reviewed-by: Vlastimil Babka 
Reviewed-by: Jann Horn 
Cc: Alexander Viro 
Cc: Christian Brauner 
Cc: Jan Kara 
Cc: Linus Torvalds 
Cc: 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

fork: do not invoke uffd on fork if error occurs

2024-10-29T04:40:38+00:00

Patch series "fork: do not expose incomplete mm on fork".

During fork we may place the virtual memory address space into an
inconsistent state before the fork operation is complete.

In addition, we may encounter an error during the fork operation that
indicates that the virtual memory address space is invalidated.

As a result, we should not be exposing it in any way to external machinery
that might interact with the mm or VMAs, machinery that is not designed to
deal with incomplete state.

We specifically update the fork logic to defer khugepaged and ksm to the
end of the operation and only to be invoked if no error arose, and
disallow uffd from observing fork events should an error have occurred.


This patch (of 2):

Currently on fork we expose the virtual address space of a process to
userland unconditionally if uffd is registered in VMAs, regardless of
whether an error arose in the fork.

This is performed in dup_userfaultfd_complete() which is invoked
unconditionally, and performs two duties - invoking registered handlers
for the UFFD_EVENT_FORK event via dup_fctx(), and clearing down
userfaultfd_fork_ctx objects established in dup_userfaultfd().

This is problematic, because the virtual address space may not yet be
correctly initialised if an error arose.

The change in commit d24062914837 ("fork: use __mt_dup() to duplicate
maple tree in dup_mmap()") makes this more pertinent as we may be in a
state where entries in the maple tree are not yet consistent.

We address this by, on fork error, ensuring that we roll back state that
we would otherwise expect to clean up through the event being handled by
userland and perform the memory freeing duty otherwise performed by
dup_userfaultfd_complete().

We do this by implementing a new function, dup_userfaultfd_fail(), which
performs the same loop, only decrementing reference counts.

Note that we perform mmgrab() on the parent and child mm's, however
userfaultfd_ctx_put() will mmdrop() this once the reference count drops to
zero, so we will avoid memory leaks correctly here.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/cover.1729014377.git.lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/d3691d58bb58712b6fb3df2be441d175bd3cdf07.1729014377.git.lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com
Fixes: d24062914837 ("fork: use __mt_dup() to duplicate maple tree in dup_mmap()")
Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Stoakes 
Reported-by: Jann Horn 
Reviewed-by: Jann Horn 
Reviewed-by: Liam R. Howlett 
Cc: Alexander Viro 
Cc: Christian Brauner 
Cc: Jan Kara 
Cc: Linus Torvalds 
Cc: Vlastimil Babka 
Cc: 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

posix-cpu-timers: Clear TICK_DEP_BIT_POSIX_TIMER on clone

2024-10-27T09:36:04+00:00

When cloning a new thread, its posix_cputimers are not inherited, and
are cleared by posix_cputimers_init(). However, this does not clear the
tick dependency it creates in tsk->tick_dep_mask, and the handler does
not reach the code to clear the dependency if there were no timers to
begin with.

Thus if a thread has a cputimer running before clone/fork, all
descendants will prevent nohz_full unless they create a cputimer of
their own.

Fix this by entirely clearing the tick_dep_mask in copy_process().
(There is currently no inherited state that needs a tick dependency)

Process-wide timers do not have this problem because fork does not copy
signal_struct as a baseline, it creates one from scratch.

Fixes: b78783000d5c ("posix-cpu-timers: Migrate to use new tick dependency mask model")
Signed-off-by: Ben Segall 
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner 
Reviewed-by: Frederic Weisbecker 
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/xm26o737bq8o.fsf@google.com